Steve Chapman’s column praising Ayn Rand and her philosophy of “The Virtue of Selfishness” is naive.
I read “Atlas Shrugged” many years ago, but as I remember the book, the captains of industry were all wealthy but honest individuals who provided valuable goods for society, such as steel and railroads.
I don’t remember such characters as Ken Lay, Dennis Kozlowski, Bernie Ebbers and “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap, whose talent was to temporarily push up stock prices (and his compensation) by the wholesale firing of employees.
For that matter, I don’t remember a chapter on airline bankruptcy, where retirement plans are decimated and the whole mess is dropped on the backs of the taxpayers.
If the characters in “Atlas Shrugged” were real, life would be grand. Unfortunately truth is stranger than fiction.
